Learning to do things on your own, with no classes and no one to help is daunting. There are usually plenty of good resources, (tutorials, videos, blogs) but there's a lot of garbage out there too. All in all, knowing where to start is almost impossible.
My traditional response to this problem is jump strait into the deep end, start a project, and dig up the information needed as I go. This usually works pretty well; even if the original project never goes anywhere just working on it forces you to search for information in an organized manner.
That's not how things worked out in the realm of animation, though.
Ambition and I are old friends, but of all my projects, the animations tended to swell the largest. They guzzled huge amounts of time and effort, turned out precious little results, and left me unhappy, exhausted, and disappointed. I did learn, and found a few great resources, but when it came down to it animating in that way was unsustainable.
So I shelved it, or at least I tried.
I've already covered my relationship with animation: it's the thing that just won't die. I think I was able to put it down for six months before I came wandering back. I didn't start any new projects, just ghosted around animation sites and hoarded pencil tests, that is, until I stumbled upon a useful spread sheet.
It was a pretty basic thing, just a list of animation exercises compiled by a fellow named Taylor Jonpeters, but it gave me just what I needed, animation in bite sized chunks.
It did wonders; I learned so much with a fraction of the anxiety, and in a way that didn't demand huge chunks of time
Eventually, this too was swept aside, but next time I pick up animation, (and I will) I'll actually have the skill needed to do something with it, rather than dinking around blindly like before.
Here are a few of the tests I finished:
My traditional response to this problem is jump strait into the deep end, start a project, and dig up the information needed as I go. This usually works pretty well; even if the original project never goes anywhere just working on it forces you to search for information in an organized manner.
That's not how things worked out in the realm of animation, though.
Ambition and I are old friends, but of all my projects, the animations tended to swell the largest. They guzzled huge amounts of time and effort, turned out precious little results, and left me unhappy, exhausted, and disappointed. I did learn, and found a few great resources, but when it came down to it animating in that way was unsustainable.
So I shelved it, or at least I tried.
I've already covered my relationship with animation: it's the thing that just won't die. I think I was able to put it down for six months before I came wandering back. I didn't start any new projects, just ghosted around animation sites and hoarded pencil tests, that is, until I stumbled upon a useful spread sheet.
It was a pretty basic thing, just a list of animation exercises compiled by a fellow named Taylor Jonpeters, but it gave me just what I needed, animation in bite sized chunks.
It did wonders; I learned so much with a fraction of the anxiety, and in a way that didn't demand huge chunks of time
Eventually, this too was swept aside, but next time I pick up animation, (and I will) I'll actually have the skill needed to do something with it, rather than dinking around blindly like before.
Here are a few of the tests I finished:
Falling item challenges.
"special effect"
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